


Just As I Believed

by EnchantedHuntress



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Male-Female Friendship, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Protective Natasha Romanov, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2018-09-08 15:13:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8849884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnchantedHuntress/pseuds/EnchantedHuntress
Summary: While Steve, Thor, Clint, and Bruce sleep in the lounge of the Tower after the battle of New York, Tony and Natasha have a long-overdue conversation about a certain report.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in the Marvel universe so be gentle with me please! Comments and kudos are loved and appreciated!  
> Posted 12.14.16  
> Edited 5.10.18

“Hell of a place to pick for downtime after battle.”

She resisted the urge to suppress her smile and let it grace her face as she waited for him to sit down next to her on the sole remaining letter of Stark Tower. There was a warm satisfaction in his being alive to quip at her. “Vy dolzhny khodit' v mire, vy sozdayete. (You must walk in the world you create).”

Grim understanding flashed in his eyes for a fraction of a second and she internally filed away that he understood Russian before responding in English.

“Perhaps I just like the beauty of destruction, Stark.” She offered, accepting the drink he poured her without waiting for him to take the first sip. It was a gesture of trust he clearly recognized by the widening of his brown eyes and the subtle mischievous twitch of his lips.

“And here I thought we were on a first name basis now Agent Romanov.” His voice dripped with mock hurt as he clutched his hand over the arc reactor and she raised a delicate eyebrow secretly delighting in his eye roll. “Capsicle told me about how you cursed him in twenty different languages when he ordered the portal closed. Had to explain to the poor man what Klingon was.”

“It was Elvish.” She demurred taking a sip to hide the smile she could feel fighting its way out. Her natural instincts were closer to the surface with him.

He blinked his large doe eyes, marveling at her playfulness. “I’d touch your forehead to take your temperature but I’d like to keep my hand.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled at his excitement from breaking her façade, asking him in a mock royal tone. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

“Too much post-battle adrenaline.” He murmured. Shocked and uncomfortable with his honesty he hastily added: “The blondes snore too much and Brucie is doing a tiny mouse impression.”

She felt a sharp pain in her chest that he was still so uncomfortable around her, though she knew it was her own fault. “Clint sawing logs again?”

“I can almost feel the plaid flannel.” He quipped, voice brittle like it was too hard to find lightness. 

She watched from the corner of her eye as he stared out at the night sky. The stars that were now visible due to all the power outages across the city. He seemed to get lost, his muscles getting stiffer as his jaw clenched. And she surprised herself by reaching out a hand and touching his shoulder with a whispered “Tony?”

If he had jumped and startled she would’ve felt guilty but she felt worse when he turned to her, eyes glassy and wet with tears, and whispered back in a choked tone. “Did it change your opinion of me?”

She swallowed heavily, feeling a lump in her throat that vaguely tasted of tears and shook her head knowing it was time to finally explain something to him. “No, it didn’t.”

Squeezing his hand firmly she kept him in place when he grimaced and tried to pull away. She held eye contact, stubbornly refusing to let him put walls between them once more. “When SHIELD came to me for the mission to assess you, that wasn’t the first time I’d thought about what you did. People who have power are always ones I keep my eye on and you were no different. But it became clear to me after Stane’s death that you were not involved in the double-dealing of weapons.”

He flinched at the mention, trying to school his expression back into an impartial mask.

“Yet still you fought back against it, became Iron Man, became…” she paused searching for the right words and smiling around them as she spoke “the first avenger.”

“Cap…” he interrupted, so very ready to argue his own unworthiness and her lips thinned as she thought of what had been said to him on the heli-carrier.

“No. Captain America was created by the army, a poster boy for war. Steve may have added many of his own qualities that made him into a hero but you _created_ Iron Man. You became a hero of your own making. The first avenger.”

Her words were firm, her voice hard but laced with kindness and gentility. He shook his head, clearing his throat as he blinked abruptly against the stinging in his eyes. His mouth twisted as he stubbornly refused the compliment. “Iron Man yes, Tony Stark not recommended.”

“That’s what SHIELD said.” Natasha allowed, swallowing around the distaste at hearing those words parroted back like they were etched permanently into his memory. Not for the first time she wondered if her actions in concocting that report were wrong.

“That’s what you wrote.” He countered eyebrows raised pointedly, not quite angry but getting there.

“Natasha Romanoff agent of SHIELD and I don’t always have the same opinions.” She tilted her head as she carefully chose her words. “I didn’t go to college. I didn’t train to be a psychologist. I was trained to be a weapon and what better weapon than one that knows all your weaknesses? One who studies every facet of a person from their expressions to their movement to what they believe about themselves and what they tell others. What better weapon than a person who has been molded to be so many different people that they know better than anyone when there is a mask, a lie?”

She wet her lips and ran her battered hand through her hair. He was quiet, too quiet. Tony Stark was always moving, always talking but perhaps that was the difference. This wasn’t Tony Stark, this was Tony. She didn’t know what his silence meant. Was he was listening and truly hearing her or was he rejecting every word she said, letting it roll off of the armor of his persona? “You let Rhodes take the suit.”

“Excuse me?" He blinked at her, incredulous at the blunt audacity and angry at being unable to follow the webs she was spinning with her words, at being unable to leap ahead and anticipate what was being said like he always did. "Did you miss the destruction of half the mansion?”

His voice was sarcasm laced with an edge of danger and his eyes had become guarded only showing what he wanted her to see. 

“If you had had enough alcohol to be so obviously drunk despite your high tolerance with the amount of poison in your system you would’ve been dead not blasting watermelons. You acted like a reckless out of control narcissist because you were dying and you wanted Rhodes to take over as Iron Man without letting him know the truth.”

“That’s a hell of an imagination you have there, Agent.” His voice was clipped and a lesser being would’ve flinched in the face of the targeted animosity in that last word. But she held his gaze allowing the amount of empathy she had felt for him, still felt for him, to surface in her eyes.

“Your father was a founding member of SHIELD. As was Peggy Carter, your godmother. You’ve hacked that system to edit the information on your file since before Afghanistan. After everything that happened, you and JARVIS had to have known I was using a cover identity. But you let me through."

She ignored the uncomfortable swallow he forced down and continued. "You wanted to know who sent me, keep your enemies closer, that I understood. But you were still kind to me, treated me like a friend instead of a spy. You asked me a genuine question despite knowing who I was and with all of my knowledge of human nature I couldn’t figure that out. But I knew that who you were, what you did was good, despite the act you were putting on. ‘There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding.’”

He shook his head, trying to shake off the weight of her perceptiveness. His words when he finally spoke were acerbic, his eyes too cold for being such a rich chocolate. So clearly fighting not to believe her because in his world no one meant what they said, no one was to be trusted. “Funny, I would’ve thought you were more of a ‘Now I am become death’ but tell me if I’m so good then why let me continue to die?” 

She was startled by how very similar they were underneath what they wanted the world to see. Natasha Romanoff cold calculating manipulative emotionless and Tony Stark selfish uncaring reckless. “I didn’t know.”

She flinched at his grating scoff and shrugged her shoulders. “It’s the truth. I didn’t know Fury had anything to help you until he gave me the serum to inject you with that morning. He and I had a…" her smile was wicked as she chose a word "...conversation about that.”

He raised an eyebrow half-disbelieving half-amused. “You work for SHIELD you know. Messing with that report, having that ‘conversation’, hell even disregarding Rogers orders long enough to let me fall back through…”

“No one owns me," Her green eyes flashed in the darkness her response sharp and instant "Not anymore. Eto ne bog, kotoryy reshayet nashe proklyatiye (It is not God who decides our damnation).”

He shook his head and sighed, voice steady and resigned as he spoke. “You’d hardly be damned for not caring about me. Even those who know me can’t be bothered.”

She raised an eyebrow intrigued by his perspective. “Pepper and Rhodes certainly seem to.”

He gave a short sardonic laugh and a far too familiar self-deprecating smile as he repeated words he had pretended not to understand back to her. “Fallaces sunt rerum species et hominum spes fallunt (The appearances of things are deceptive and the hope of men is deceived).”

He took a large sip of his drink letting the words hang in the air and she waited for him to finish with a patience she hardly ever felt. “They’re upset when I’m hurt, they’d mourn if I died. But to Pepper I’m an incompetent boss, someone who lives to frustrate and annoy her and to Rhodey I’m an obligation.”

She frowned as she thought about the interactions she’d observed between them all and her stomach twisted as she saw how he would believe that. “People’s words, even their actions don’t always define what others mean to them, who they are.”

Her heart lifted as his eyes lightened somewhat, the burden of feeling unloved slightly soothed. His tone was joking but his gaze was serious and questioning as he said. “You covered for me, defended me, saved my life…who are you?”

She looked into his eyes and hoped that whatever expression was on her face, freed from her rigid control, was enough to help him believe her. “Depends who asks but to you, a friend. Accept what you will. Your actions are your own. But to answer your question Antoshka, it didn’t change my opinion of you. You are a hero just as I believed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Translations are internet based as I don't speak Russian or Latin...yet ;)  
> The sayings Natasha says in Russian are pulled from famous Russian sayings. Her quote about society and masks is by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Tony's response quote is from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita, spoken by Vishnu.  
> When Tony speaks Latin it is what Natasha said to him in Iron Man 2 in Pepper's office. I argue that he pretended not to understand because he was still figuring her out and didn't trust her fully, but cmon he was a genius rich boy who most likely went to private schools and had an Italian mom who was most likely Catholic he so knows Latin.


End file.
